Prediction of dynamic current waveform and spectrum in a semiconductor device

摘要

A method for accurately determining the shape of currents in a current spectrum for a circuit design is provided. The method includes determining timing and power consumption characteristics. In one embodiment, timing characteristics are provided through a electronic design automation tool. The timing characteristics yield a current pulse time width. In another embodiment, power consumption characteristics are provided by an EDA tool. The power consumption characteristics yield a current pulse amplitude. The shape of the current pulse is obtained by incrementally processing a power analyzer tool over relatively small time increments over one or more clock cycles while capturing the switching nodes of a simulation of the circuit design for each time increment. In one embodiment, the time increments are one nanosecond or less.

主权项

1. A method for determining a current spectrum for a circuit design of an integrated circuit, said method comprising:
determining power consumption characteristics for the circuit design of the integrated circuit over discrete increments of a time period; constructing a time domain current waveform based upon a path delay distribution from timing characteristics of the circuit design, and the power consumption characteristics; converting the time domain current waveform to a frequency domain current waveform; and identifying a location and an amount of decoupling capacitors for a printed circuit board housing the circuit design based on the frequency domain current waveform, wherein at least one method operation is executed through a processor; wherein the power consumption characteristics and the timing characteristics are provided by analysis of the circuit design with at least one engineering design automation tool.